


little fucking weirdo

by thefudge



Category: The Edge of Seventeen (2016)
Genre: (a few years after the movie), Age Difference, Aged-Up Character(s), F/M, Messy, Older Man/Younger Woman, Teacher-Student Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-06
Updated: 2020-12-06
Packaged: 2021-03-09 23:34:06
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,453
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27924592
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thefudge/pseuds/thefudge
Summary: “Grown too big for this town, have you?” he calls after her.Nadine winces. “Oh hey, Mr. Bruner. Didn’t see you there.”
Relationships: Max Bruner/Nadine Franklin, Nadine Franklin/Max Bruner
Comments: 17
Kudos: 39





	little fucking weirdo

**Author's Note:**

> guess who finally watched this movie this weekend and decided to write the very worst fic about it? c'est moi!

Nadine is trying to do that thing where she doesn’t make it all about herself. Now that she’s actually studying psych in college, she’s learned that the most efficient way to stop making it about yourself is to stop _thinking_ about yourself _all the time._ Yes, quite the revelation, she knows, but it took her a while to get here. It turns out the best thing you can do is to think about others and what _they_ want. Worry more about them and less about you. You’ll be better off that way. Because, as her mother is fond of saying, everyone else is just as hollowed out and desperate as you are.

This is why when she sees Mr. Bruner across the bar she doesn’t immediately go up to say hi. For once, she respects his wishes. He wouldn’t want to be disturbed by his ex-student who used to pester him on the daily with her pseudo-suicidal thoughts.

Plus, there’s the divorce thing. Her mom told her all about it. It was amicable, apparently, but that's just a nice word for ugly things. It’s been a couple of months, and he must still feel raw about it. Is raw the right word? He strikes her as someone whose feelings are never exposed to the elements. 

Anyway, he had a good thing with his wife, so…he must feel like shit right now. He doesn’t need her pity hellos and how are yous.

But on her way to the bathroom, she passes by his seat and he happens to look up.

“Grown too big for this town, have you?” he calls after her.

Nadine winces. “Oh hey, Mr. Bruner. Didn’t see you there.”

Her teacher’s sharp blue eyes give her a once-over. “Funny, cuz I could feel your eyeballs on the back of my neck all evening.”

Has she been staring pointedly? Oh God, she has.

“Sorry. I was trying to…figure out if it was you.”

“I guess all bald guys look alike, huh?” he says with a soft, mean smile as he takes another sip of his beer.

“No, you’re looking – looking good,” Nadine stutters.

“I didn’t say I looked bad.”

Nadine fidgets with the hem of her jacket. “Sorry. Apparently I still have foot-in-mouth disease. It’s incurable.”

“Yeah, watch out for that. You can’t get away with it that often when you’re an adult.” 

Nadine snorts. “Like I’m an adult.”

Mr. Bruner shrugs. “Don’t think they’d serve you if you weren’t.”

She rolls her eyes. “Sure, technically, I’m twenty-one, but I still feel like a toddler. Act like one too.”

He doesn’t qualify that remark with a response, but his eyes, tender and scouring at the same time, do the talking for him.

Nadine wonders if maybe she should take the seat next to him. Maybe he’d like some company, after all. Just like old times.

“Would you mind if I –”

“No, thank you. We both came here to drink alone, so let’s do that.”

Well, he’s still his old charming self.

Nadine suppresses a small “ _asshole_ ” that almost escaped her lips.

She gives him a cheery smile. “Oh no, I wasn’t drinking alone. I was supposed to meet up with Erwin. He’s home for Thanksgiving too.”

Mr. Bruner looks over his shoulder. “Don’t see him anywhere.”

“Yeah, well, he ...he couldn’t make it. He got busy with his family. Extended relatives from Korea and all that.”

“Hmm, or he just didn’t want to see you,” he comments glibly, taking another swig. 

Nadine blinks. “ _Jesus_.”

His eyes crinkle. “Too much?”

“I’ll say.”

“Sorry, this is only my third. I’ll be nicer by the sixth,” he mumbles, lifting the bottle.

Nadine suspects he won’t actually get any nicer. But she can’t leave him alone. She slides into the seat next to his.

She orders another beer for herself.

“Hey, what did I say about drinking alone?”

“I wasn’t listening,” she says airily, because the thing that you have to do when Max Bruner is being a dick to you is to be a dick right back.

“Typical,” he mutters.

“Come on, I’m not such bad company. Remember when you gave me half your cookie for lunch?”

He frowns. “What cookie?”

“Nevermind, happened ages ago. I was practically an embryo.” She takes a large gulp of beer and almost chokes on it, because adults and shit.

Mr. Bruner glances at her sideways. “How’s college life?”

Is this a trap, she wonders, or does he really want to know?

“It’s going okay. I’m majoring in Psychology, learning a lot about…the human mind and... the many ways it can sabotage you. I’m getting to know myself and the people around me.”

He snorts. “It's that boring, huh?”

“It’s _not_.” She pouts. “You know, you try to act all anti-intellectual, but you were always reading a different book on your lunch break. And most of them were like, Yale University Press shit. I noticed.”

His smile is like a little angry parenthesis. “You noticed, huh?”

“I mean, it was hard not to.”

He shakes his head. “Yeah, a lot of good reading ever did me.”

Nadine leans forward and nudges him shyly. “Hey, don’t be so mopey.”

“You’re the one interrupting my moping session,” he grumbles, shoulders hunched.

“I know it’s hard…” she trails off, knowing she’s about to spout some garbage, but also knowing she can’t help herself. “Break-ups are hard, because you never really get closure. Erwin and I, we’re just pals now, but it still stings sometimes, you know?”

He laughs. It’s more like a bark. A little vicious too. “You’re comparing my divorce to your prepubescent hook-up?”

“It wasn’t – it wasn’t like that. We were together for a year and a half.”

“Wow, practically a whole lifetime.”

“Lasted more than your marriage.”

Holy shit. Did she actually _say_ that? What the fuck is wrong with her? Why can’t she ever keep her mouth shut? It’s like her filter is broken. 

“I’m _so_ sorry –”

Mr. Bruner levels her with a look. “Nadine, maybe you should consider getting the fuck out of my face.”

When she walks through the front door, her mother asks why she smells like a brewery. Jesus, she only had like one or two beers. She heads towards the kitchen to grab a third.

“How was Erwin?” her mother asks, eyes glued to her tablet. She’s texting a proctologist, apparently. Nadine has already exhausted all her poop jokes on that one.

She stands in front of the fridge, undecided. “He was great. We had a good talk. Hey, do you think he’d like some pecan pie? I was thinking of taking some over to his place.”

“You’ll have to ask Darian,” her mother informs her. “He’s the one who made it. But he’s upstairs with Krista, and I wouldn’t interrupt if I were you.”

Nadine heaves a sigh. Yeah, she’s absolutely fine with the fact that her brother and best friend are still going strong, several years later, but she won’t lie, she’s a bit jealous. She was so certain college would break everyone up, but it only happened to her and Erwin, apparently. At this rate, Darian will probably marry –

She shakes her head. Better not go down that road tonight. It’s not that she wouldn’t be happy for them, but it still feels a little weird. 

“I’m gonna... bring Erwin some pie,” she tells her mother, sliding the casserole into her backpack.

“Okay, hon. Say hi to his parents for me.”

She’s almost disappointed how easy it was to pull off that lie.

Nadine cycles all the way to his house. She’s half-frozen by the time she drops her bike on his unkempt lawn.

There is only a small light upstairs.

She knocks on the door, fingers numb. Nothing happens for a long minute.

She knocks again, harder.

“Mr. Bruner? I know you’re in there.”

She keeps knocking.

His voice, when he finally deigns to answer, sounds weary and disgruntled, like a Dickensian ghost. 

“Get off my property, kid.”

“I brought you some pecan pie.”

She hears him grunt. “I’m good. Now scram.”

“I’m not going anywhere until you open up.”

He snorts. “Have fun on my porch then.”

“Come ooon, I want to make it up to you. Please, Mr. Bruner. Open up.”

She can hear his sad shuffle up the stairs. And then, only silence. All the lights go out.

Nadine slumps against the door. So, he’s gonna be like that. What a cunt.

Admittedly, she’s the one stalking her ex-history teacher at 10 pm on a Friday.

She walks to the edge of the porch and sits down, legs crossed.

She takes out a slice of pie from the casserole and shoves it in her mouth, crumbs falling down her chin.

She spies a small toy boat in the corner, buried under a few leaves. She thinks about his baby. He must be older now, almost a preschooler. Does he come to visit?

She shoves another slice in her mouth.

By the time the door opens behind her, she’s finished the rest of the pie.

“I thought that was supposed to be for me.”

Nadine stills. She looks over her shoulder, mouth still full.

“Um, sorry?”

Mr. Bruner heaves a sigh and turns away. He leaves the door open for her.

She had expected the house to look derelict. A real man-cave of despair and solitude. But it’s not much different from the last time she was here when an actual family was living in it. It’s cozy and clean and almost welcoming.

Well, except for the scowling history teacher standing in the kitchen with his arms folded.

“You still hungry?”

Nadine nods noncommittally.

Mr. Bruner takes out a bucket of chicken wings from the fridge. She doesn’t comment on the very un-Thanksgiving meal.

“Can I wash my hands first?”

He doesn’t stop her from going to the sunk. Nadine watches the water go down the drain. She feels lightheaded and nervous. She doesn’t want to eat anymore. She wants to get out of her skin. Her skin almost never feels good, no matter how hard she tries. She leans forward and sticks her whole head under the jet of water. Just like that.

It’s colder than she expected, but it shocks her in a good way. She could stand under it forever. 

It’s Mr. Bruner who pulls her up by the scruff of her neck.

Nadine blinks away the wetness from her eyes. Water drips down her hair and pools on the tiles. It’s like she’s melting, her whole body sort of collapsing on itself.

Mr. Bruner is still holding her by the neck, like a little dog.

“You little fucking weirdo.”

And maybe this is what she’s always responded to, this brutal kind of honesty. He never sugarcoats it, even when he’s sugarcoating it.

Nadine stands on her tiptoes and clumsily brushes her lips against his mouth. 

Max – because once you halfway peck your ex-history teacher on the lips, he goes by his first name in your head – pulls back quickly, removing his hand from her neck.

“What the fuck, kid?”

“I –”

Normally, she’d fall back on _I’m sorry_. The eternal _I’m sorry_. But she’s always been awful at apologies, especially when she doesn’t mean them.

“I just really wanted to kiss you,” she says, dropping back on her soles. “And uhh…”

Suddenly, all she can think about is that stupid text she sent that one guy in high school she thought she liked. What was his name again? She can vaguely remember a face. She vividly remembers wanting to kill herself because she sent him that text. And then making Mr. Bruner read it.

“I just feel this connection between us. I wanna be with you… I wanna give you head,” she says automatically, like reading straight from the script. “Want you to put your mouth on my tits. I wanna feel you inside me.”

She doesn’t know if any of it really applies here; it’s just that verbal diarrhea comes so easily to her. 

Max blinks. It’s a furious kind of blinking. He opens his mouth, but nothing comes out.

She dissolves into giggling. “Remember that? Remember when I texted that guy my lame sexual fantasies?”

“No,” he says, by which he means he does, of course.

Nadine wipes more wetness from her eyes. “I might skip on the giving you head part, but the rest still stands.” Pause. “Well, I might actually blow you too, but not on the kitchen tiles because it’s hard on the knees.”

That's when she notices the weird tension in his shoulders, the way he stands very still but also teeters a little, like a block of cement that’s shaking under explosives. And she suddenly thinks of an awful 9/11 joke and she cringes so _hard_ internally that she decides it’s better to throw herself at Mr. Bruner and face rejection than face herself another single moment.

This time when she stands up and kisses him, folding her lips gently over his lips, he doesn’t pull away. Nadine angles her head to catch his mouth better. She brings her arms around his neck, pressing herself against him, deepening the kiss, boots scuffing on the tiles. She almost loses her balance. His hand comes up to steady her. His fingers are warm on her back. He doesn’t remove his hand. Nadine’s body trembles with the effort to keep herself upright and make out with his unresponsive mouth at the same time.

She breaks away for a moment, hands dangling around his neck.

“Am I that disgusting to you?” she asks, a sad catch in her voice.

He exhales. “Oh for fuck’s sake.”

And he sounds just as exasperated as all those times he had to sit and listen to her angsty diatribes.

But – and this is the important part – he grabs her face and kisses her back.

Now that he’s kissing back, Nadine feels her legs truly giving up. It’s okay though because he sort of backs her into the counter. She grabs the edge and lifts herself up, or tries to. She slides down the first time. He has to grab her hips to help her up. Everything about it is shaky and unstable and kind of funny, but also disturbingly hot. His mouth is like that too, it’s a very overwhelming mouth. She can hardly keep up; she’s working all the muscles in her neck to match his pace, because he’s probably got it in his head that he will punish her for her audacity by kissing the living shit out of her. His big hands cup her jaws like they want to crush her skull, thumbs leaving imprints, slipping against wet skin because she’s still fucking wet from the tap. And speaking of which –

She unzips her jeans and tries to wriggle them down her hips.

He finally breaks the kiss and looks down at her.

“What’s that for?” he rasps.

“Oh, um, in case you want to fuck me and stuff.” Her words sound a little slurred, because her mouth is kind of numb, because _wow_.

“Fuck you and stuff?” he echoes.

She blushes. “F-forget it. Can we just keep kissing?”

He lifts her chin up. “Why don’t you touch yourself instead?”

And shit, his words make her clench embarrassingly around nothing. She nods, leaning forward to capture his mouth. She slips her fingers inside the cotton band of her panties. She starts to stroke herself slowly.

“Shit, you’re actually doing it,” he says and there’s a little _something_ in his voice – like a twang, reminiscent of some accent he scrubbed out of his speech – which makes her feel like she accomplished the hardest thing ever, which is to draw an unwarranted reaction from him.

She grabs the front of his shirt and pulls him back into the kiss. His mouth trails away from her mouth, nips the side of her jaw. Nadine cranes her neck with a moan and he doesn’t need more of an invitation to start kissing down her neck, her collarbone, tongue slipping in the hollow there, making her shudder. She never imagined he would be this fucking greedy. Then without preamble he lifts her sweater and pauses for a second to stare at her chest. Nadine didn’t bother to wear a bra under a bulky thing like that and she wonders if a bra would’ve made her tits look better. Before she can second-guess herself he bends his head and covers one of her nipples with his mouth.

“Oh my God,” she keens.

She loves that he just went for it.

She rubs herself faster as he strokes and licks her breasts, and her stupid sweater is bunched up against her cheek and it’s _really_ tickling her, and she wonders if she’s allergic to wool now, and she’s so _close_ to coming, God she can feel it –

He lifts his head for a moment.

“Na-ah, not yet.”

And he grabs her wrist and pulls her hand away from her crotch.

“But _Max_ –”

He frowns. “Max? Did I give you permission to call me that?”

“N-no, but I just thought –since we’re being intimate -”

“You thought wrong.”

“Okay. Fine. _Mr. Bruner_ ,” she says through clenched teeth. And then more quietly, “Dick.”

He gives her one of those mean little smiles that only make her more distressingly aware that she’s so close to tipping over, but it doesn't seem to matter. She's in his house, so she's going to do things his way. He spreads her legs and methodically tugs her jeans to her knees. He unzips himself and brings her hips closer and it almost feels pedestrian until she catches a glimpse of his cock, but only a glimpse, because in a flash that cock is inside her and she _wasn’t_ _ready_ because she’s practically lifted off the counter by the movement and she has to paw at his shoulders to find purchase, but his hands come up around her waist and keep her still and calm her down and he whispers in her ear, “you’ve done this before, right?”

Her throat is kinda choked up, but she manages to say, “Not like this.”

He doesn’t ask her anything else. If she didn’t know any better, she’d think he likes her discomfort and the way she can’t fill her lungs with oxygen.

He doesn’t really go slow to help her adjust, but he’s not too fast either. He’s doing things his way, exactly the way _he_ wants it and she can’t say it doesn’t work for her, this total selfishness, the way he maneuvers her hips like she were some kind of fuck-doll, because she's so _exhausted_ with her own selfishness, it's nice when she gets to be used. But it’s not impersonal, because he’s looking her in the eye, watching her as he fucks her, watching her tits bounce and her whole body tremble, watching her come undone right before him, almost like asking her, _is this how you hoped it would be?_

And when she feels herself tightening around him, when she feels that warmth spreading everywhere, she tips back her head and thinks _yes, yes, yes, yes_ and maybe – maybe she doesn’t just think it, she screams it too.

Afterwards, they sit down to eat the chicken wings.

It’s decidedly weird.

But they’re both famished. Nadine gnaws on a bone. She licks her fingers and thinks about his cum in the sink. He was kind enough to pull out in time. He stroked himself over the sink and she added her hand to his for good measure, and it was really warm and sticky and nice. She wanted to taste it, but he yanked her head up and told her it was enough for one night and he kissed her lips softly and let her come down from the counter.

He stares at her, knowing exactly what she’s thinking.

Nadine blushes. 

“I do remember the cookie,” he says, out of the blue.

“What?”

“When I shared my cookie with you at lunch. I still regret that. It was a good cookie.”

Nadine snorts. She can’t believe him. “You little fucking weirdo.”

He didn’t expect her to throw that line back at him.

He smiles. This time a rare, genuine mile. Yeah, maybe she _was_ his favorite student after all.

Nadine grabs the last wing.

She knows they’re never going to talk about this, not in so many words. She knows she’s going to go back to college like nothing happened.

But maybe…maybe when she comes back for Christmas, she’ll drop by his place with Darian’s famous Christmas brownies. 

And maybe he’ll leave the door open again.

You know, just to say hi.


End file.
